


Disconnect

by meanderingsoul



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst and Feels, Blood and Injury, Fear, Gen, Insecurity, Introspection, Season/Series 05, Superpowers, Team as Family, Violation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 14:43:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13549506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: Everything around her seemed washed out, lifeless, too far away, the way she’d used to feel like the only person left alive on the planet sometimes, sleeping alone in her van.





	Disconnect

 

It wasn’t just her, you know, power-powers the inhibitor shut off.

All her memories from right after terrigenesis were such a mess that Daisy didn’t have much in the way of a sense of her powers turning on in the first place. There’d been a lot of anger and terror and grief and then they were just there and there was no going back. It had just happened.

But _damn_  could she feel the difference now the very minute they’d taken it away.

One of the Kreepers had growled and shoved her along when she’d stumbled and staggered walking afterwards, but it was like her eyes and her feet together still couldn’t quite feel the ground. There was no difference between the limestone and the metals and the freakishly over-dense flesh of the Kree in front and behind her.

Everything around her seemed washed out, lifeless, too far away, the way she’d used to feel like the only person left alive on the planet sometimes, sleeping alone in her van.

She’d known since Jiaying had her feel that mountain down into its roots that everything had its own buzz, a vibration, a fizz, a tone. The mountain was different from the water and the glass and the wooden buildings of Afterlife. Mammal bodies hummed different than concrete, bones quaked different than air. She could _feel_ it.

Daisy had never been able to actually call her ‘Mom’ again, even in her head. It never felt right, after.

And sometimes in the quiet she wondered what it said about her, the way she lost all the family she ever had so quickly. Everyone she loved got taken away. Or she had to leave for their sake.

Same difference in the end.

It had been such a quick change from using that deep inner focus May had taught her to accidentally crack her own bones to being able to vibrate the water into a spiral between her fingers. Just _days_.

“You have such an attunement with the molecular nature of things, their physical structures at the fundamental level. You know them by touch before you even ever touch them. It’s kind of beautiful actually,” Jemma had said once, later, when she’d gotten past being _weird_ about all of it but before she’d been gone.

Daisy’d given Fitz a look behind Jemma’s back. She had such a pretty way with words when she wasn’t trying to write Torchwood fanfiction. Fitz wouldn’t even beta read for her unless he’d already had a drink.

Now she watched Fitz and Simmons from across the room, his back to her and that stupid makeup on Jemma’s face and she couldn’t tell what kind of metal the shackles around her wrists were made of or feel the limestone in the walls.

She’d thought about it a lot those months by herself. After Hive, after…

Attunement, if that was actually the right word. The way she could make things shake, the shockwaves she could force through the air, even when she’d learned how to lift herself around it to almost fly – none of it seemed that much like attunement. But, it’d gotten to the point where she could find her people by sense alone if she was in range, find the particular warmth and shape of Fitz or Mack or that one discordant ping from Coulson’s implant, could wake up and known whether she was on the Zephyr or in the base by the thrumming in the walls whether they were in flight or not.

She hadn’t even noticed the change.

Maybe her powers had less to do with quaking things and more with some kind of echolocation, like a big bat. At least Batgirl was cool. Maybe she could talk Fitzsimmons into doing Batman characters for Halloween this year.

This year. Who the hell was she kidding. None of them really knew what year it was.

Somehow despite twenty-five years without her powers, she’d gotten so used to them it felt weirder to not-have them than it had been to get them in the first place and honestly? That seemed kind of screwed up.

Daisy, down on some deep and carefully closed in little level of herself containing as much panic and fear as she could fit into the space to be better dealt with later, the way May had taught her years ago, she felt like she couldn’t  _hear_  anything anymore. She felt mutilated on some fundamental level, not just the lingering, creepy violation of being knocked out and waking up with that thing installed in her neck.

Simmons kept working her jaw, tilting her head to the side and Daisy kept wondering how she could still hear out of that ear. If she could at all. The blood had trailed down into her hair and dried stiff. If Fitz didn’t wash it for her soon Daisy was going to go ahead and make Jemma be still long enough to do it herself.

Daisy still wasn’t quite sure where she stood with them. She’d hurt them when she left. She hadn’t been able to really understand that for a while.

She hadn’t hurt May the same way because May understood every last stupid thing she’d done and why on a level Daisy hadn’t been able to appreciate before. Mack and Yoyo had been more complicated. Coulson had been different, because Coulson was always different, always had been someone different in her life.

But Fitz had said it.  _You_  left  _us_ , and she’d never had the chance to find out where they wanted to go from there. They seemed ok now? But they hadn’t _talked_ and Fitzsimmons had been her peeps right from the start in a way Daisy knew she would never be able to replace. She didn’t want to lose them.

She’d never gotten to talk to them about if they’d moved into the apartment she’d found them. Had they even had time to think about it? When was the last time she’d had time for movies with Fitz? The last time she and Jemma had the time to go shopping together instead of just noticing half your shirts were worn out and gross and ordering something half asleep? The last time she’d plopped down between them on the couch and felt like they wanted her there? Fitz’s warmth and Jemma’s cotton candy soft hair.

Between the Framework and LMD’s and way too many versions of not-Fitz she had no idea.

The old/new Zephyr felt hollowed out around her and the weird twitchiness of the busted down ultrasound had made her want to cling to it, plead with Jemma not to turn it off, like it was a methadone kind of relief to her smothered Inhuman powers. But Jemma was talking about her getting her powers back like it was an inevitability, Fitz nodding along like it wasn’t even in question.

Daisy said nothing. She watched their faces and Fitz’s fluttering hands around the plane’s wiring and tried to burn it into her head. Just in case.

She could tell Coulson just didn’t believe the truth, that she’d destroyed the world, could tell May didn’t either. They’d both thought the best of her for so long somehow. But Daisy’d seen that video. She didn’t want to believe it, still didn’t believe she had that kind of raw strength, definitely didn’t think she’d survive it in the end. She’d shatter her own skull with that kind of effort. But the maybe maybe maybe…

This wasn’t a maybe she could live with.

They’d all be safer if she just got used to this, if Quake died here in the future and Agent Johnson got back to normal-agent business. She’d been a good agent before she been an Inhuman or a Secret Warrior or Quake. She could do that again, right?

And if not, well. Daisy knew exactly what had to be done.

Being alone was something she could learn how to do again too.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm having a lot of Daisy feels about tomorrow's episode you guys. 
> 
> Also I think there's a lot of stuff Fitz, Simmons, and Daisy need to work through. We've had some amazing skimmons and fitzsimmons moments this season. I need some more more fitzdaisy and trio stuff asap! ;)


End file.
